Young Investigator, Robotics

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On‑site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on‑site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Compensation: $159,650

Are you passionate about taking artificial intelligence to the next level, solving problems that require modeling, reasoning, and explanation? We are looking for talented researchers interested in applying their skills toward the next generation of intelligent systems, and pursuing our mission of AI for the common good.

• Duration: 1‑3 years
• Start date:
  
  Flexible
• Applicants must be within one year of completing their PhD or already hold a PhD
• Details:
  The Allen AI Young Investigator is a postdoctoral program offering unique benefits. The program will enable you to balance working collaboratively on an Ai2 project while pursuing an independent research agenda.

Ai2's Robotics team is led by Dieter Fox. We aim to develop and leverage scalable simulation domains to scientifically investigate the scaling and generalization capabilities of foundation models for robotics, and use these insights to develop broadly competent robots. Following a longstanding tradition at Ai2, we are committed to fully open‑source research and work toward application domains with a positive impact on society.

We are looking for applicants interested in robotics, with a focus on core techniques in robot manipulation, large‑scale training in simulated environments, sim‑to‑real transfer, robot foundation models, and skill learning.

• Robot foundation models – Investigate the scaling and generalization properties of foundation models for robotics, and contribute to developing broadly competent robots that can operate in the real world.
• Manipulation and skill learning – Develop agents that manipulate objects, follow instructions, and acquire new skills across diverse tasks, in both simulation and on real robot hardware.
• Simulation and sim‑to‑real – Build and leverage scalable, GPU‑accelerated simulation environments for large‑scale training, and develop pipelines that transfer learned policies reliably to real‑world robots.
• Open source research – Make substantial contributions to the fully open methods, datasets, benchmarks, and tools that enable rigorous, reproducible, and distributed experimentation.

We regularly publish in high‑profile conferences and journals in robotics (CoRL, ICRA, RSS), computer vision (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV), and machine learning (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML). We collaborate frequently with researchers on other Ai2 teams focused on computer vision, large language models, and others. Our main office is close to the University of Washington.

• Work under the mentorship of an Ai2 mentor in research and grant writing.
• Allocate 50% of time to collaborative work on an Ai2 project and additional UW projects.
• Allocate 50% of time to independent research projects.
• Engage with research community, publish findings.

• Within one year of completing a PhD or hold a PhD.
• Strong foundation in at least one of the research areas listed above.
• Extensive work experience and peer‑reviewed publications at top scientific venues (RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, etc.) are favorably viewed.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods.
• Ability to communicate clearly, exchange accurate information.
• Ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

• Medical, dental, vision, and employee assistance program for team members and families.
• Health savings account plan, healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and flexible spending account plans.
• 401(k) plan.
• $125 per month for commuting or internet expenses, $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Up to ten sick days, up to seven personal days, up to 20 vacation days, and twelve paid holidays.
• Annual bonuses.

Ai2 is an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability status, or other protected characteristics. We provide reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities. Please contact recruiting if you need accommodations.